Albert Lacombe
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Father Albert Lacombe (28 February 1827 – 12 December 1916) was a French-Canadian Roman Catholic missionary who lived among and evangelized the Cree and Blackfoot First Nations of western Canada. He is now remembered for having brokered a peace between the Cree and Blackfoot, negotiating construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway through Blackfoot territory, and securing a promise from the Blackfoot leader Crowfoot to refrain from joining the North-West Rebellion of 1885.
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[edit] Early life
Lacombe was born in Saint-Sulpice, Quebec, to Albert Lacombe and Agathe Duhamel on 28 February 1827. Since his parents were farmers, most of his early life was spent on the family farm. However, he was from an early age highly religious. At age 22, he was ordained into the Oblate order on 13 June 1849, following studies at the Collège de l'Assomption in L'Assomption, Quebec.
Following ordination, he was sent west to Pembina, North Dakota, where he worked from 1849 to 1851. In 1851 he returned briefly to Quebec, where he secured a position as a curate in the town Berthier.
[edit] Moving west
Lacombe was unsatisfied in Quebec, and in 1852 he followed Monsignor Alexandre Taché, then suffragan bishop of Saint Boniface, to the Red River Settlement. Later in 1852, Father Lacombe proceeded to Fort Edmonton, where he overwintered with the Cree and Métis. It was during this time that he began his studies of the Cree language, which ultimately led to a translation of the New Testament into Cree, as well as a grammar and dictionary of the Cree language. After relocating to Lac Ste. Anne, Lacombe concerned himself during the period from 1853 to 1861 with expanding the mission and deepening his ties to the native population, eventually travelling as far north as the Lesser Slave Lake in search of converts.
Despite his good relations with the natives, Father Lacombe had, by 1861, been unsuccessful in persuading the Cree near Lac Ste. Anne to abandon their nomadic lifestyle. He therefore sought out a new mission site more suitable for agriculture, and in 1861 a settlement was established along the Sturgeon River at Saint Albert, Alberta.
[edit] A broader mission
In 1864 he was tasked with evangelizing the Plains Indians, and from 1865 to 1872, he travelled extensively throughout the prairies. It was during this time that he brokered a peace between the Cree and the Blackfoot. In 1872 Lacombe was sent to Fort Garry (modern Winnipeg, Manitoba) to promote the colonization of Manitoba, and to this end travelled throughout eastern Canada and the United States. He became the Vicar of Saint Boniface, Manitoba in 1879. It was during this period that he began his association with the Canadian Pacific Railway and extended his ministry to the navvies working on the right-of-way.
In 1880, he relocated to Calgary. When the CPR was preparing to lay track through Blackfoot territory against their wishes, he negotiated an agreement with the Blackfoot leader Crowfoot that allowed the railway to pass through Blackfoot land. Crowfoot was famously given a lifetime pass to travel on the railway by CPR president William Van Horne, as was Lacombe. When the North-West Rebellion erupted in 1885, Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald enlisted Father Lacombe's assistance in assuring the neutrality of the Plains Indians. Although braves commanded by Poundmaker and Big Bear were involved in the fighting, Crowfoot, believing the rebellion to be a lost cause, kept his warriors out of the conflict.
[edit] Final years
For the remainder of his life, Lacombe played a major role in founding schools throughout the West, such as St Mary's School in what is now the Mission District of Calgary. His last major travels were to Europe in 1900 and 1904, where he visited Austria and met Emperor Franz Joseph. He also travelled to Galicia (now largely modern Poland and Ukraine) to promote Galician settlement of Canada. He died in 1916 in Midnapore, Alberta, now a suburb of Calgary. His body was interred in the crypt of the St. Albert parish church. A high school in Calgary, Father Lacombe High School, was established in 1979 bearing his namesake. Additionally, an elementary school, Albert Lacombe, is named for him in St. Albert, Alberta. The town of Lacombe, Alberta is also named in his honour.
